Did He Honestly Think I Would Believe That???

The next day was the day of mom’s memorial service.  The members and pastors of Gospel Light Church did an incredible job and that cannot be understated.  They were welcoming and loving to family and friends from across the country that they had never met.  We were overwhelmed with kind words, cards and memories of Mom.  For that one hour we were able to set aside everything else and just remember mom.  I owe a huge thank you to my wife’s family members and my Army family for the outpouring of support on that day.  When we arrived at the church I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount of flowers. I would say over half were from some portion of my wife’s family, Various Army units that Jackie and I have been a part of, and my immediate family like Kayla for the grandchildren and some that could not attend the service.  As we concluded the service, meals, and our goodbyes to those hitting the road the difficult part of going through mom’s belongings and confronting Chet were inching closer by the second.  We made a quick trip back to the Air BnB to change and collect ourselves, then it was time to meet Chet back at their home. 

One key thing took place immediately prior to the funeral beginning that I must mention as this will become key to future parts of this story.  This particularly becomes important when I begin telling you about some future lies told by Chet.  I saw Chet and the Pastor speaking right as everyone was taking their seats.  After that conversation Chet approached me and told me that something amazing had happened.  He got a call from the funeral director telling him that the entire bill for our family was paid in full by someone who wished to remain anonymous.  This was indeed good news.  My parents were never really great with money.  Chet had a good job, they went on trips to Mexico, had nice vehicles, apple products galore, and apparently he even had the money to pay for two rents to live with his side piece BN.  However, they were never great with their money; Jackie, Kayla and I were fully prepared to need to assist with funeral expenses.   When we left the Church that day, there were no such expenses and there were no future bills to come from the funeral home or church.  Remember this. 

Jackie and I again arrived at the house first; Chet was waiting in the garage in his pickup.  I told Chet that there was something we needed to talk about before Kayla and Nick get there.  I told him up front that no matter what the answers were, all I wanted from him is the stone-cold truth.  I informed him that I can tell things were not exactly all is well in paradise between he and mom lately, but I wanted to ask him some direct questions.  I told him I am going to approach this the same way I do when I need to have difficult conversations with my soldiers.  Just get everything out in the open and not try to hide or skirt around anything.  I also told him that just like that example, if I find out he has lied to me things will only get worse between us.  I gave him every chance at this time, and many times you will read about in future posts, to simply own up to things I already knew.  I explained that naturally I am upset but all I want is the truth, so we can process accordingly and stop searching for answers while only finding more questions.  I could honestly tell by the look in his eyes that he was already processing how he was going to lie his way out of my interrogation.  I abruptly asked him “are you living with someone else or seeing someone else?”  He adamantly said No, I would never do that to mom.  He insisted even that he was here “every day” with her as she struggled and tried to explain to me how hard life has been but he was there.  I told him again, plainly, “do not lie to me.  I can forgive a lot of things but if you are lying to me I’m going to know.  If I find out you are lying all it is going to do is make me dig deeper for more answers.”  To which he responded “I’m not, I don’t even know what you’re asking.”  I slow rolled my hand at this point again seeing what his reactions would be both verbal and non-verbal.  I next told him that I have been hearing some very disturbing things from some people since I have been down here in Arkansas.  I told him that if it were simply one person trying to tell me he was cheating on mom and not even living there then that would be one thing.  However, multiple different accounts led me to a point where I had to confront him.  He got a little more defensive at this point.  He was visibly agitated and attempted to tell me that although he had no idea who had told me this, he also had no idea why they would ever say something like that.  At this point I knew I was not going to get anything remotely close to the truth from him.  He was dug in like a tic and I had been down this road with him before.  One lie turns into another and another to continue covering his tracks. Unfortunately, I was well acquainted with detecting when both Mom and Chet were hiding something.  It happened too often before. 

Once I was confident that he was not going to admit to being with his new girlfriend, BN, I changed my questioning from rumors I had heard to the tangible evidence to see how he would react to that. I next asked him if he had any Instagram accounts.  To my surprise, he did admit to having an Instagram account.  He even verified that the account in question (Blue_Buzzard_Racing to refresh your memory from post 1) was indeed his.  He explained how he did have an Instagram account, but he only used it to talk to Shaniya and look at others posts, he never posted or was active.  I remember wondering at this point what was going to come next because I do not believe he thought for a second that I had copies of his conversation with Shania where he admitted that he was in a serious relationship with BN and living with her.  I asked him directly “Then who is BN?” The look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know but he responded by saying “who?”  It was at this time that I again told him “look you just need to come clean and be honest with me because this will only get worse for you from here. You need to explain this.” It was at this time that I opened the screenshot of his intragram conversation with Shaniya where he told her about living with Bri and how he had left Julie but they weren’t going to tell anyone yet.  He stared at my phone, I’m sure racking his brain for a way out of this situation.  He looked back to me and said “I don’t know what that is, this is just insane.” To which I responded with “so you are telling me that none of that is true?  Is that not your Instagram account and is that not a conversation between your account and Shaniya’s?” he attempted to explain to me that he had no clue where that was coming from but that he did not say any of that.  However, at this time he did try to tell me that BN was a real person that he does in fact know.  He went back to his lie that he told my mother’s friend when she caught him with her.  He tried to tell me how BN was a woman that he was training and attempting to employ with his company but things did not work out well.  He tried to tell me how she was “crazy and he couldn’t hire her” but that he did spend time with her and people just “got the wrong idea.”  I literally could not believe what he was spinning.  I remember thinking to myself “how stupid does he think I am?  There is no way he possibly thinks this is believable?” I remember attempting to process the fact that he was seriously so unwilling to admit to me that he left mom for another woman that he was going to lie right to my face as he stared down at proof knowing I knew something.  He tried saying that “that must be a fake conversation” and I rolled my eyes.  I asked him “if that is the case then how on earth did Shaniya know about BN by her name?  How on earth could things have lined up like that?  At this time by brother and sister arrived and I told Chet “Like I mentioned in the beginning, there is too much here to ignore.  We are not done with this but if that is what you are telling me we can settle this for now we have work to do.”  He again attempted to reaffirm that he would never have done anything like that and even tried joking with me about the fact that I would believe something like that.  He then told me that maybe Shaniya was just trying to start trouble.  The only reason he used Instagram to talk to her was because he couldn’t text her.  I had enough and walked away into the house. 

We began to pack some things up and talk about what each of us would like to keep or take home to remember mom.  Chet told my brother, sister and I multiple times, word for word “you kids can take whatever you’d like” and “even if you don’t take something now I would always talk to you in the future before getting rid of anything to see if any of you wanted it.” This was my green light.  I knew at that moment there were two specific items that I was not leaving that house without.  I was leaving with mom’s ipad and computer.  I knew that Chet would not part with her cellphone due to the way he acted when I asked for it the first time.  But like I mentioned, mom was an apple maniac and she knew how to integrate their products (thanks marcus).  I knew whatever was on her phone was likely to also be backed up or stored on her ipad and computer also, to include those text messages and photos.  I was so angry on the inside that I was lied to in so many ways.  Also, by the fact that he truly thought I believed him or at a minimum that he got away with it for the time being.  It was literally like a switch flipped and he acted like our conversation about his indiscretion never happened. 

We began scouring the house for memorabilia and items that we wanted to keep.  I did not notice mom’s ipad anywhere in the open or in her bedroom.  This very seriously did not set well with me.  Her phone was lost, ok I get that, it happens mom loses stuff.  But why was that ipad not in her bed with her then??? She would on many occasions use that ipad to text or facetime.  She should have had that at a minimum to have some sort of connection to the world outside that bedroom and that house.  I began digging deeper.  There was a table in the living room between the couch and a recliner.  This table had two drawers, inside one of these drawers I found her ipad.  I just could not imagine why it was tucked away in that drawer?? my anger grew toward Chet knowing he could have given it to her.  Well, that is if he was even near her or in that house within the weeks prior to her death.  Which, that was seeming more and more unlikely.  I grabbed the ipad and one of the chargers that appeared to go along with it. With that in hand and mom’s coffee pot I walked out to our car to pack them up.  In this process I walked directly by Chet who looked at what I had.  I told him I wanted the coffee pot because he doesn’t drink coffee.  Odd to keep but I wanted it.  I think at the end of the day I didn’t want him to have anything that I know mom enjoyed.  Either way he saw what I had in my hands. 

We picked through some more items.  Thankfully Chet gave my sister my mother’s jewelry such as wedding rings and my grandmothers wedding ring that my mom inherited.  I got the feeling that we needed more time but at least we were going to leave with some of the most important items.  One last thing that really rubbed Jackie, my sister and I all the wrong way that afternoon/evening was something Chet said a couple different ways.  When we talked about mom’s fine china or additional cooking items because she loved to bake and cook.  Chet mentioned we should take a lot of stuff that he would not need.  He also mentioned there were certain things he did want to retain.  However he followed this up with something along the lines of “well you know I’m fairly young and I could meet someone some day and even though I keep these things now I could give them to you in the future if I start a new life with someone new.” I will never in my life forget the look of just pure and utter disgust in my sister’s eyes.  I do not know how she kept her composure because I knew she wanted to maul him.  If anyone reading knows my sister Kayla, you too should be impressed because you likely know that she’s an amazing person but not known for keeping her cool or keeping her mouth to herself.  Sadly, as I mentioned this was a comment or type of comment Chet made at least 3-4 times that day when discussing property or mom’s belongings.  We even talked about it later that night how odd it was that we were less than 8 hours past mom’s funeral and he was saying things like that.  We were not able to pack everything that evening so we left to grab some boxes and packing material from Lowe’s.  Chet was insistent that he go to the races that night because, as he said, “that’s what mom would have wanted him to do.” So we only got a few hours there that afternoon/evening and he would not allow us to continue packing without him there.  He said things like “well I gotta go soon so we need to wrap this up and we can finish tomorrow.”  I remember saying something like he can leave and we can keep packing things up.  I do not remember his exact response so I will not attempt to portray that but we all knew what he was getting at.  We were not welcome to stay there without him present.  He left for the races and we went back to the BnB. 

Chet wanted everyone to come to the races that night.  It was his thing, he was passionate about racing.  His dad was there and never got to see him race before so that was a big deal to him.  I understand that, it will probably be the one and only time that his father gets to watch him race.  From the family aspect though, no one else wanted to be near him.  He and mom had some good friends they met during their travels to Mexico that made the trek down for her funeral.  They were at the races his dad when Jackie and I showed up to make an appearance.  I honestly did not want to be there.  However I told jackie I think we needed to be there.  One additional piece of information we heard about his new girl BN was that she was active in the racing scene.  Chet even had a post in his racing facebook page naming her, thanking her for helping with his car one night.  I had to see for myself how they interacted.  Would I be able to pick her out of the crowd easily?  Would it be obvious to everyone they were sleeping together, living together, living a lie?  Or were they fooling everyone like they were trying to fool us.  At this point in time I had zero clue what this mystery woman looked like though.  So, when we got to the races, my ears were hypersensitive.  I was constantly listening to everyone’s name as I was introduced to people.  Listening to other conversations around us.  I paid extra attention to every woman Chet interacted with. All in all the night came and went fairly uneventfully.  We sat in the stands with Grandpa and the other friends we had just met. 

While we watched the various races my head was spinning.  When we arrived at the racetrack, Chet took me right over to his car to show me something.  One of his teammates or friends in the racing community made a commemorative decal for his car with a picture of my mother on it.  He seemed so proud of the decal and again made comments about how supportive she was for him racing.  How he wished she could still be there, how he misses her, I wanted to puke.  My head was spinning because I just could not fathom the type of people that Chet and BN had become.  She was there that night (we found that out later).  She was there, watching Chet play the victim raving about how his life was upside down without his lovely wife.  I just cannot wrap my mind around the fact that she was completely ok with him so openly saying how much he loved his wife while he was at the same time living with her and telling her that he loved her.  So many things that I was just unable to comprehend.   Thankfully, Chet did not make the main event that night, so Jackie and I had a good excuse to leave early since he was done racing for the night.  We said our goodbyes and I told Chet I will see him in the morning and will call when we are ready to meet him at the house. 

Alright ladies and gentlemen fasten your seatbelts, because if you haven’t found anything thus far disturbing, suspicious or just plain fucked up yet I firmly believe you are about to.  Most of us that stayed at the BnB woke up to our last day in Arkansas.  Soon we would be going our separate ways so we had a nice breakfast together.  I was running around with my nieces and nephews for a while and getting ready to face Chet again.  For some reason my mind just could not slow down that morning.  I kept second guessing everything.  What was I missing, there had to be something I was missing right?  At one point I was even thinking maybe I am looking too hard at this.  My uncle cautioned me the night prior that I shouldn’t be “out for blood.” He was somewhat concerned that I was looking for someone or something to blame for losing my mother.  He is rarely wrong; I was angry and on the hunt.  I just kept coming back to the fact that too many things were not adding up.  Chet was going to extreme lengths to hide something.  In my opinion there had to be a reason he was hiding so much and lying to so many people.  I wanted to find out what he was hiding and why.  I remember telling my wife “I just wish I had something more to prove I am on the right path.”  Well be careful what you wish for because I’m about to get just that. 

I was gathering myself and I called Chet to tell him that we were about ready to head into town and meet him at the house.  He did not answer my call.  I thought maybe he was sleeping in as sometimes the race nights can go fairly late.  A second later my phone rang and it was Chet.  As I answered, before I could say anything I heard a woman’s voice arguing aggressively. I could tell that he did not realize that his phone had dialed my number and the phone was operating through the Bluetooth in his pickup. I remained silent and just listened.  It was very clearly a domestic style dispute between two people that were very well acquainted with one another.  The female was arguing with Chet about something related to another person in her family, for her privacy I will not go into any additional details.  What I will not forget, and even wrote this down to ensure I had it word for word is what the female said next.  The woman stated to Chet “you’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m going to stay here with you just because she’s gone now.” My blood boiled instantly.  I knew instantly she was referring to my mother. I walked outside and continued to listen.  Chet began to fight with the woman telling her at one point to “shut your mouth and don’t talk to me like that” to which the female got even more aggressive and said something along the lines of “you don’t tell me what to do.” It sounded to me like there was a small physical altercation but the next thing I heard was a car door slam followed immediately by screeching tires and cursing by Chet.  The last thing I heard was “God damnit” and the call was gone.  I was shocked, literally speechless and immobilized with shock.  Any doubts I had about Chet and this mistress were gone forever.  He had the audacity be with her the very night of Mom’s funeral with all of us family in town.

My phone rang shortly after the last call ended, it was Chet.  I answered and the only thing that came out of my mouth was “what the hell was that?” I will remind all of you that Chet is not a good liar, but this next lie was so unbelievable I completely lost it on him.  “Did you hear that Justin?  I was getting gas and this crazy lady tried getting in my pickup” Chet claimed.  I snapped, I had to walk away from others near me.  I screamed at Chet “STOP, just STOP dad.  You are fooling no one. I’m not an idiot I clearly heard a large part of that conversation and I know who it was, I know you know who it was the lies need to end now. The evidence just keeps stacking up. I don’t want to hear anything more we just need to get through the next week and then we are done.  Just let me get through my wedding before we split the family apart.”  He was silent I told him that we are coming to the house to finish packing up.

 I do not get outwardly spiritual, superstitious, or whatever you may call it.  However, in that moment I had an overwhelming feeling of “there was my sign”.  I kept wanting something to grasp to, knowing for certain I was not insane.  This was it, this happened for a reason.  He was caught dead in the act and again tried to cover himself with a useless lie. 

My sister and Jackie heard me blow up on Chet and knew something had happened.  I do not easily lose my cool with anyone and was specifically trying to remain calm with Chet but I had had enough.  I did not want to tell my sister right then and there what had just happened.  Jackie, being the voice of reason at that moment told me I cannot keep hiding things from my family. They deserved to know.  I told Jackie about the conversation I overheard and Chet’s worthless attempt to conceal the truth again.  I remember talking about how he must really think the rest of the world is just filled with oblivious idiots.  Did he really think I would for a second believe that a random woman was trying to get into his car??? 

When we got to the house, I couldn’t even stand to look at Chet or be in the same room as him.  I let him go through things with my brother, sister, aunt and uncle but I kept my distance.  He knew he was caught, he had to know, but again he tried to act like nothing had happened that morning. 

During this time, we finished packing up a lot of mom’s things that we were taking from the house.  Kayla and I made our way out to the garage where we noticed mom’s vehicle was still out there.  We decided to go through it.  Thankfully, we did because this is where I found mom’s computer.  I told Kayla about what had happened with Chet and that I was taking the computer to see what all was on there.  As I mentioned previously about mom’s handwriting being alarming, it was clear she was having difficulties writing by hand because we also found typed and printed noted to Chet in the house.  These were notes of affirmation pleading with him to “mend and heal” their marriage.  I believed there could be helpful information or documents on the computer to help us piece together the timeline of when exactly Chet may have began not living with Julie.  Potentially based on the dates saved on certain things like these notes we could at least begin to speculate on when he began seeing BN on the side. 

Our vehicles were packed and we were preparing to make our journey back to north Dakota.  I made one last stab at Chet concerning his lies and on certain things.  One thing that still bothers me to this day is the fact that I left those poor dogs there.  I asked Chet was his plan was for mom’s vehicle and for the dogs.  I told him I was extremely disgusted with the way his dogs were cared for.  I threw in there that it is another example that he really was not home to take care of mom or them.  There is no excuse for Duke losing the amount of weight he did.  He again got aggressive and said no that is absolutely not the case it was that he had a problem where Duke got sick and lost a bunch of weight not long ago.  He told me that he even took him to the vet.  I told him that Jackie and I are willing to take the dogs and find them good homes where they will be better provided for and live with people that will be there for them.  He told me I couldn’t take them, he couldn’t lose mom and them.  “They will probably even be inside dogs now that it is just them and I” he said.  I was exhausted and didn’t have the energy to fight with him any longer.  I wanted to throw in one last jab.  Something like “You, them and BN huh” or “Are you going to take them to your new house you already live in” but I didn’t.  We said our goodbyes with Kayla and Nick then Jackie and I had to hit the road.  Jackie asked me what he said about the dogs and we then discussed that we need to continue to monitor that.

 I am trying to stay chronological with this, but I will throw this in here because it is a smaller detail that I would probably overlook as we get into future posts.  Around Christmas I found out that Chet was still not living at the house where mom lived but he was living with BN at their new house.  Apparently, Chet was still paying rent and keeping property at the old house though and that is where the dogs were.  I was told by someone that helped him move some things out of the old house, where mom and he lived, that the dogs were still there!  He didn’t even have the decency to take his dogs to the new house where he was living with BN.  I wanted to drive down there and take his dogs and give them better homes myself.  I hate that he has suck a lack of respect for all forms of life.  Jackie and I called the hot springs police to report animal mistreatment.  I have no doubt Chet rarely checked on them, maybe 2-3 times a week most weeks. 

This is where I will wrap up this post.  In the next post I will discuss the week of our wedding and how things escalated quickly after that event.  If you are still with me, thank you for your patience and perseverance if you’ve committed to reading all of this so far.  Now things really get interesting.